Читать книгу Ajijic - Patricio Fernández Cortina - Страница 8

Chapter III

The Mysterious Visitor of La Renga

One day in April, at five o’clock in the afternoon, the sound of the bell was heard at the door of the bookstore. A man crossed the threshold and entered, the gust of wind blowing behind him swept the papers off the counter. He was tall, strong, and graceful with dark skin and blue eyes, brown hair, and the fine features of miscegenation. His features were firm and his gaze brave and determined. He was a resolute man and had the gait of those who know very well what they want. He had good manners, was meticulous, and always dressed in fine and impeccable clothing. It was not the first time that he had entered the bookstore, for he was a regular customer; his visits were always mysterious.

After entering, without saying a word, he walked to the left and settled in front of the first of the bookshelves. He began to look at the books, silently. He took one, flipped through it, then another and flipped through it too. He read the front covers, the back ones and returned the books to their places. Then he went to the second bookshelf and repeated the procedure. He took a book and then another, looked at them, flipped through them, and returned them to their place. He turned around, walked past the counter, and went to the third bookshelf without looking at Julio, who was watching him sideways, holding a pen in his hand and the bookstore sales ledger in the other. There he took a book and looked at the front cover and the backside. He opened it and began to smell it, holding it with both hands, bringing his nose closer to the threads of the spine. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath with the book touching his face. He absorbed, like a ritual, the smell of the work of the writer and the publisher, of the paper and the ink factories: the sweet smell of the printing press. “How much work and sweat must have gone in to giving life to this sea of words!” he thought. Then, pulling the book away from his face, he opened his eyes, let a few seconds go by, and then held it at the level of his heart embracing it. Then he looked at it again, flipped the pages, touched the spine, and with great care put it back in its place. He took another book and repeated the ritual, always in silence. Julio watched entranced, sipping his coffee.

After the unique procedure was complete, the man returned to the first bookcase, took a book, and tucked it under his arm; he went to the second bookcase and took another book, also putting it under his arm; and finally, he went to the last bookcase, the one earmarked for the smelling ritual, and there, taking a little bit more time, he calmly pulled a book out, and then went to the counter with the three books. He deposited them next to the cash register and waited silently for Julio to hand him the bill of sale. As Julio made annotations in the sales ledger and typed the prices on the cash register, the man gazed undaunted at the arch through to the back patio of the bookstore and seemed impervious to the conversations and laughter of the customers chatting back there, leisurely seated in their equipales. It was as if he was looking at a threshold in fear of crossing it. When Julio gave him the bill of sale, the man took out of his pants’ pocket a bill holder that had the figure of the Statue of Liberty engraved on it. He separated the bills from lowest to highest denomination and paid. When he received his change, he put it in his other pants’ pocket, took the three books, slightly bowed his head towards Julio in a gesture of gratitude, and went to the door of the bookstore. Before leaving, he poked his head onto the street looking to his left and then to his right. He departed to his right, towards the lake, and at the corner he turned left onto 16th of September, losing himself in the calmness of the street in Ajijic.

Julio was never able to decipher the meaning of the ritual that the man repeated whenever he visited the bookstore. He had also noticed that in all those years the man never took more than one book from each bookcase, and he never walked between the books and the people browsing the bookshelves. If luck would have it that on a given afternoon, the man would arrive and see that another customer was already perusing the first bookcase, the man would wait stoically until the other customer finished his search, before approaching and beginning his routine. On a certain occasion, Julio was reviewing the bookstore’s sales ledger and discovered that there was a clue to the books the man purchased: they were all books that dealt with searches, losses, abandonments, and returns.

One morning when Juan Sibilino was cleaning the back patio of the bookstore, Julio came up to him and asked him a question. Juan Sibilino was an older man, short, lean, with indigenous features, brown skin, and coarse, black hair. He was not cultured, but he was a wise connoisseur of the human soul and its nature. He was the butler of the mysterious man who visited La Renga, and in the mornings, during his spare time, he worked at the bookstore helping Julio organize the books and doing the cleaning. He was very tightlipped with respect to his boss, which seemed needless to Julio, since he never said a single word about that man and left everything shrouded in a cloud of mystery.

“Juan Sibilino, tell me something. Your boss is a mysterious man. What is he hiding? What’s his secret? Who is he really? Why does he act so strange? You work for him, and you live in his house, but you never say a word. You know very well that he comes here every so often, buys the books in a very peculiar way, and never says a single word. He doesn’t even say thank you, he just bows his head and leaves. Why so much mystery with him?”

Juan Sibilino put the rag he used to dust the equipales on the table, and turning to Julio, said:

“You know very well, young Julio, that he is my boss. I take care of him and serve him, but I don’t meddle in his affairs. He is a prudent man. He does not ask me anything about other people, doesn’t meddle in the affairs of others, I’m not sure if you can understand me. It’s unusual for him to talk to me about his affairs, he locks himself in his library and reads for hours, writes, and listens to music. So let him be, after all he’s been a big help to you by buying so many books from you; let the world take its course. He is a good man, don’t worry, he will never cause you any problem.”

“Alright, alright,” Julio replied. “But why so much mystery?”

A prudent and loyal man, Juan Sibilino was not going to reveal anything to Julio about the life of his employer. He picked up the rag again to continue his work, and turned to Julio, saying dryly:

“I really don’t know.”

“I’ve never seen him on the street or in the town square, or in the boardwalk. I mean, doesn’t he have any friends or family?”

“No, he doesn’t have anyone. In the past, he enjoyed having a good time, but for several years now he’s rarely left the house, and since he has no family in town…”

“How strange,” Julio said, patting Juan Sibilino on the shoulder and, smiling at him, made a gesture of gratitude towards him. He went inside the bookstore and settled in at the counter to continue writing reviews of his books.